A few days after the disputation a crowd led by Wok of Waldstein, a favorite of King Wenceslas, carried the papal bulls of indulgence to the pillory and publicly burned them. The well-known legend attributes to Jerome of Prague a leading part in this, and relates that the bulls were strung around the neck of a strumpet mounted on a cart, who solicited the favor of the mob with lascivious gestures. No punishment was inflicted on the participants, and Wok of Waldstein continued to enjoy the royal favor. The defiance of the pope was complete, and the temper of the people was shown on July 12, when in three several churches three young mechanics named Martin, John, and Stanislas, interrupted the preachers proclaiming the indulgences, and declared them to be a lie. They were arrested and beheaded in spite of Huss’s intercession; many others were imprisoned, and some were exposed to torture. Then the people assumed a threatening aspect; the three who had been executed were reverenced as martyrs; tumults occurred, and the prisoners were released. Soon afterwards a Carmelite was begging at the doors of his church with an array of relics displayed upon a table, with the indulgences attached to them to excite the liberality of the pious. A disciple of Huss denounced the affair as a fraud and kicked over the table, and when he was seized by the friars a band of armed men broke into the house and released him, not without bloodshed.[496]
John XXIII. could not avoid taking up the gage of battle thus thrown down. The Bohemian clergy appealed to him piteously, representing the oppression to which they were subjected, and stating that many of them had been slain. He promptly responded. The major excommunication, to be published in all its awful solemnity in Prague, was pronounced against Huss; the Bethlehem chapel was ordered to be levelled with the earth; hisfollowers were excommunicated, and all who would not within thirty days abjure heresy were summoned to answer in person before the Roman curia. In spite of this Huss continued to preach, and when an attempt was made to arrest him in the pulpit the threatening aspect of the congregation prevented its execution. He appealed to a general council, and then to God, in a protest which, in lofty terms, asserted the nullity of the sentence pronounced against him. In his treatise “De Ecclesia,” which followed not long after, he attacked the papacy in unmeasured language borrowed from Wickliff. The pope is not a pope and a true successor of Peter unless he imitates Peter; a pope given to avarice is the vicar of Judas Iscariot. So of the cardinals; if they enter save by the door of Christ they are thieves and robbers. Yet the clergy, for the most part gladly, obeyed the bull of excommunication, and Huss’s presence in Prague led to a cessation of all church observances; divine service was suspended, the new-born were not baptized, and the dead lay unburied. At the request of the king, to relieve the situation of its tension, Huss left Prague and retired to Kosi hradek, whence he directed the movements of his adherents in the city and busied himself in active controversial writing, the chief product of which was the “De Ecclesia,” which was publicly read in the Bethlehem chapel on July 8, 1413.[497]
King Wenceslas had vainly tried to bring about a pacification of the troubles in which passions were daily growing wilder, complicated by the race hatred between Teuton and Czech. A confused series of disputations and conferences and controversial tracts occupied the first half of the year 1413, which only embittered those who took part in them and rendered harmony more distant than ever. In fact there was no possible middle term, no compromise in which the disputants could unite. It was no longer a question of reforming the morals of the clergy, as to the necessity of which all were agreed. The controversy had drifted to the causes of clerical corruption, springing, as Wickliff and Huss and their disciples clearly saw, from the very principles on which the whole structure of Latin Christianity was based. Either thepower of the keys was a truth vital to the salvation of mankind, or it was a lie cunningly invented and boldly utilized to gratify the lust of power and the greed of avarice. Between these two antagonistic postulates dialectic subtlety was powerless to frame a project of reconciliation, and argument only hardened each side in its belief. One or the other must triumph utterly, and force alone could decide the controversy. Wearied at last with his unavailing efforts, Wenceslas finally cut the matter short by banishing the leaders of the conservatives, Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim, Peter of Znaim, and John Elias. Stanislas retired to Moravia, where, after incredible industry in controversial writing, he died on the road to the Council of Constance; Stephen survived him and revenged them both.[498]
Huss and his adherents were now masters of the field; and though he abstained from returning to Prague, except an occasional visit incognito, until his departure for Constance, he could truly say, when he stood up in the council to meet his accusers, “I came hither of my own free will. Had I refused to come neither the king nor the emperor could have forced me, so numerous are the Bohemian lords who love me and who would have afforded me protection.” And when the Cardinal Peter d’Ailly indignantly exclaimed, “See the impudence of the man,” and a murmur ran around the whole assembly, John of Chlum calmly arose and said, “He speaks the truth, for though I have little power compared with others in Bohemia, I could easily defend him for a year against the whole strength of both monarchs. Judge, then, how much more could they whose forces are greater and whose castles are stronger than mine.”[499]
While thus in Bohemia the upholders of the old order of things were silenced and reformation in the morals of the clergy was enforced with no gentle hand, the news spread around Christendom that the long-desired general council was to be convoked at last for the settlement of the Great Schism, the reformation of the Church from its head downwards, and the suppression of heresy.Many strivings had there been to effect this, but the policy of the Italian popes, as at Pisa, had thus far successfully eluded the dreaded decision. The pressure grew, however, until it became overwhelming. With the rival vicars of Christ each showering perdition upon the adherents of the others, the spiritual condition of the faithful was most anxious and a solution of the tremendous question was the most pressing necessity for all who believed what the Latin Church had assiduously taught for a thousand years. The politics of Europe, moreover, were hopelessly complicated by the strife, and no peace was to be expected while so dangerous an element of discord continued to exist. This was especially the case in Germany, where independent princes and prelates each selected for himself the pope of his preference, leading to bitter and intricate quarrels. Second only in importance to this was the reform of the abuses and corruption, the venality and license of the clergy, which made themselves felt everywhere, from the courts of the pontiffs to the meanest hamlet. Heresy likewise was to be met and suppressed, for though England could deal single-handed with the Lollardry within her shores, the aspect of matters in Bohemia was threatening, and Sigismund, the emperor-elect, as the heir of his childless brother Wenceslas, was deeply concerned in the pacification of the kingdom. In vain John XXIII. endeavored to have the council held in Italy, where he could control it. The nations insisted on some place where the free parliament of Christendom could convene unshackled and debate unchecked. Sigismund selected the episcopal city of Constance; John, hard pressed by Ladislas of Naples and driven from Rome, was forced to yield, and, December 9, 1413, issued his bull convoking the assemblage for the first of the following November. Not only were all prelates and religious corporations ordered to be represented, but all princes and rulers were commanded to be there in person or by deputy. Imperial letters from Sigismund, which accompanied the bull, gave assurance that the powers of State and Church would be combined to reach the result desired by all.[500]
No such assemblage had been seen in Christendom since Innocent III., two centuries before, in the plenitude of his power, had summoned the representatives of Latin Christianity to sit with him in the Lateran. The later council might boast fewer mitred heads than the earlier, but it was a far more important body. Called primarily to sit in judgment on the claims of rival popes, its mere convocation was a recognition of its supremacy over the successor of Peter. From its decision there could be no appeal, and the questions to be submitted to it were far more weighty than those which had tasked the consciences of the Lateran fathers. From every part of Europe the Church sent its best and worthiest to take counsel together in this crisis of its fate—men like Chancellor Gerson and Cardinal Peter d’Ailly of Cambrai, as earnest for reform and as sensible of existing wrongs as Wickliff or Huss themselves. The universities poured forth their ablest doctors of theology and canon law. Princes and potentates were there in person or by their representatives, and crowds of every rank in life, from the noble to the juggler. The mere magnitude of the assemblage produced a powerful effect on the minds of all contemporaries, and the wildest estimates were current of the numbers present. One chronicler assures us that there were, besides members of the council, sixty thousand five hundred persons present, of whom sixteen thousand were of gentle blood, from knights and squires up to princes. The same authority informs us that there were four hundred and fifty public women, but an official census of the council, carefully taken, reports that the number was not less than seven hundred, and evensuccubiwere popularly said to have joined in the nefarious trade. Thus the strength and the weakness, the virtue and the vice of the fifteenth century were gathered together to find relief as best they might for the troubles which threatened to overwhelm the Church. After many doubts and much hesitation John XXIII. fulfilled his promise to be present, relying upon his stores of gold to win a triumph over his adversaries and over the council itself.[501]
It was inevitable that Huss should tempt his fate at Constance.To both Sigismund and Wenceslas it was of the utmost importance that some authoritative decision should put an end to the strife within the Bohemian Church. The reformers had always professed their desire to submit their demands to a free general council, and Huss himself had appealed to such a council from the papal sentence of excommunication. To hesitate now would be to abandon his life’s work, to admit that he dared not face the assembled piety and learning of the Church, and to confess himself a heretic. The host of adversaries in the Bohemian clergy whom his bitter invectives had inflamed and whose preferment had been forfeited through the agitation which he had led would surely be there to blacken him and to misrepresent his cause, and all would be lost if he were not present to defend it in person. They had long jeered him for not daring to present himself to the Holy See in obedience to its summons, and had pronounced blasphemous his appeal to Christ from its excommunication. To hesitate to submit his cause to the council would give his adversaries an inestimable advantage. Besides, incredible as it may seem in view of the violence of his assaults upon the doctrine which rendered the high places in the hierarchy profitable, and his persistent denial of the validity of his excommunication, he believed himself to be in full communion with the Church, that he would find the council in sympathy with his views, and that certain sermons which he had prepared would, when delivered before the assembled prelates, be efficient in bringing about the reforms which he advocated. In his singleness of mind he could not comprehend that men who had thundered as vehemently as himself against current abuses and corruptions, but who had not dared to assail the principles from which those evils sprang, would shrink back aghast from his bolder doctrinal aberrations, and would regard him as a heretic subject to the inquisitorial rule prescribing the naked alternative of recantation or the stake.[502]
When, therefore, the imperial and royal wishes for his presence at Constance were signified to him, with a promise of safe-conduct and full security, he willingly assented, and so anxious was he to be present at the opening of the council that he did not even wait for the promised safe-conduct, which reached him only after his arrival there. That some discussion took place among his friends as to the danger to be incurred there can be no doubt. Jerome of Prague, when on his trial, asserted that he had persuaded Huss to go, and Huss in one of his letters from prison alludes to the warnings which he had received. He himself was evidently not wholly without misgivings. A sealed letter left with his disciple, Master Martin, not to be opened till news should be received of his death, alludes to the persecution which he had suffered for restraining the inordinate lives of the clergy, and his expectation that it would soon reach its consummation. He makes disposition of his slender effects—his gray gown, his white gown, and sixty grossi, which comprise the whole of his worldly gear—and expresses his remorse for the time wasted before his ordination, when he used to play chess to the loss of his own temper and that of others. The unaffected simplicity and pure-heartedness of the man shine like a divine light through the brief words of his last request. A letter in the vernacular to his disciples also announces his fear that his enemies may seek in the council to take his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he may have eloquence to uphold the truth and constancy to endure to the last. Still, he did not wholly neglect precautions. Not only did he procure from the inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, the certificate of his orthodoxy already alluded to, but he posted, August 26, throughout Prague a notice in Latin and Bohemian that he would appear before the archbishop, then holding a convocation of the Bohemian clergy, and challenged all who impugned his faith to come forward and accuse him either there or at Constance, asserting his readiness to submit to the punishment of heresy in case he was convicted, but that accusers who failed should be subjected to the talio. When John of Jessinetz, his representative, presented himself the next day at the door of the convocation, he was refused admission on the pretext that the body was deliberating on national affairs, and he was told to come back another time. In the assembly of nobles, however, Huss obtained an audience of the archbishop,who was also papal legate, and who declared that he knew of nothing to render Huss guilty except that he ought to purge himself of the excommunication. Of this a certified notarial instrument was sent to Sigismund by Huss with the statement that under the imperial safe-conduct he was ready to go to Constance to defend publicly the faith for which he was prepared, if necessary, to die.[503]
Huss set out, October 11, 1414, under the escort and protection of John and Henry of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, all his friends, and delegated for the purpose by Sigismund. The cavalcade consisted of more than thirty horse and two carriages. It was preceded, a day in advance, by the Bishop of Lubec, who announced that Huss was being carried in chains to Constance, and warned the people not to look at him, as he could read men’s minds. Already his name had filled all Germany, and this advertisement was an additional incentive for crowds to gather and gaze on him as he passed. His reception served to foster the fatal illusions which he nursed. Everywhere, he wrote to his friends, he was treated as an honored guest and not as an excommunicate; no interdict was proclaimed where he stopped to rest, and he held discussions with magistrates and ecclesiastics. In all cities he posted notices on the church-doors that he was on his way to Constance to defend his faith, and that any one who desired to assail it was invited to do so before the council. On reaching Nuremburg, October 19, in place of deflecting to seek King Sigismund and obtain the promised safe-conduct, he proceeded direct to Constance, while Wenceslas of Duba went to the court and brought the document to him there a few days after his arrival. It was dated October 18.[504]
On November 2 Huss reached Constance, to be greeted by a crowd of twelve thousand men assembled to look upon the dreaded reforming heretic. The council had not yet been opened. On the 10th a letter from one of the party states that as yet no ambassadors from any of the kings had arrived, and though JohnXXIII. was there with his cardinals, no representatives from his rivals, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., had presented themselves. What to do with the Bohemian Wickliffite was a problem which puzzled pope and cardinal, and after much discussion it was determined to suspend his excommunication, and permit him to frequent the churches freely, at the same time requesting him not to be present at the solemnities of the council, lest it might lead to disorder. Considerable apprehension, moreover, was felt as to a sermon to the clergy which he was understood to propose delivering. Huss himself was utterly blind as to the position which he occupied. On November 4, the day before the council was opened, he wrote to his friends at home that overtures had been made to him to settle matters quietly, but that he expected to win a great victory after a great fight. On the 16th he mentioned that when the pope was celebrating mass every one but himself had assigned to him some function in the ceremony, and he characterized the omission as neglect, evidently considering that his position entitled him to recognition and distinction.[505]
He knew that his opponents had not been idle, but he did not fear them. He had been preceded in Constance by two of his bitterest enemies—Michael of Deutschbrod, known as de Causis, and Wenceslas Tiem, Dean of Passau—and these, in a few days, were reinforced by a more formidable antagonist, Stephen Palecz, fully equipped with most dangerous extracts from Huss’s writings. Wenceslas Tiem had been the bearer to Prague of the bull offering indulgences for the crusade against Ladislas of Naples, and his profitable trade had been broken up by Huss. Michael de Causis had been priest of the Church of St. Adalbert in the Neustadt of Prague; he had gained the confidence of King Wenceslas by pretending that he could render profitable some abandoned gold-mines near Iglau, and the king had intrusted him with a considerable sum of money for the purpose. After working a few days at the mines he decamped to Rome with the funds, which enabled him to purchase a commission as papal procurator “de causis fidei,” whence his appellation. He had already, in 1412, sent to Rome charges against Huss, which the latter pronounced to be lies. The day after Huss’s arrival in Constance, Michael postedon the church-doors that he would accuse him to the council as an excommunicate and suspect of heresy, but Huss treated the matter very lightly, and adopted the advice of his friends to take no notice of it until the arrival of Sigismund, who was not expected until Christmas. Meanwhile Huss himself gave ample cause for adverse comment. So perfect was his sense of innocence and security that he could not be content with prudent obscurity. Almost immediately on his arrival he began to celebrate mass in his lodgings. This attracted the people in crowds, and was necessarily a cause of scandal. Otto, Bishop of Constance, sent John Tenger, his vicar, and Conrad Helye, his official, to request Huss to cease, as he had long been under papal excommunication; but he refused, saying that he did not consider himself excommunicated, and that he would celebrate mass as often as he pleased. Although thus defied, the bishop, to avoid disturbance, contented himself with forbidding the people from attendance. Soon after this Huss placed himself, with some provisions, in a covered forage-wagon which was to be sent for hay. When the knights who were responsible for him could not find him, Henry of Lastenbock (Chlum) rushed to the burgomaster and demanded that he be searched for. The city was in an uproar; the gates were closed, horse and foot were sent in every direction to find him, and the circumstance was easily magnified into an attempt to escape.[506]
The sturdy Bohemian was evidently a troublesome subject to deal with. In the eyes of the faithful it was quite scandal enough to see at liberty a priest who had openly defied a papal excommunication, and had defended the recognized errors of Wickliff; there was, moreover, every probability that he would carry out his audacious design of preaching to the clergy a sermon in which the vices of the papal court and the shortcomings of the whole ecclesiastical body would be pitilessly and eloquently exposed, and it would be proved from Scripture that the whole system had no warrant in the law of Christ. The path which the pope and his cardinals had to tread in managing the council was likely tobe tortuous and thorny enough without this additional element of disturbance and turbulence. It was far safer to disarm him at once, to anticipate his attacks by treating him legally as one accused of heresy and awaiting trial. Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis, and a crowd of other Bohemian doctors and priests whom Huss had roughly handled, had already furnished ample material for his indictment, and in the inquisitorial process the first step was to make sure that the accused should not escape. Even had the case been one in which bail could be taken, Huss had the whole kingdom of Bohemia at his back; bail to any amount would be furnished and forfeited, and, once safe at home, he would have laughed to scorn a condemnation for contumacy. Such might reasonably be the arguments of the cardinals when the resolve was taken to arrest him, but the execution of the design was either inexcusably insidious, or the manifestation of irresolution which reached its conclusion only by degrees. On November 28 the cardinals, in consistory with the pope, sent to Huss’s lodgings the Bishops of Augsburg and Trent, with Henry of Ulm, the burgomaster of Constance, to summon him at once before them to defend his faith. The envoys greeted him kindly, and though both he and John of Chlum protested that the summons was a violation of the safe-conduct, he immediately consented to go, although he said he had come to Constance to appear openly in the council, and not secretly before the cardinals. He added that he could not be imprisoned because he had a safe-conduct. John of Chlum and some friends accompanied him to the palace occupied by the pope. When the cardinals told him he was accused of disseminating many heresies, he replied that he would rather die than be convicted of a single one; he had come with alacrity to Constance, and if he was found in error he would willingly abjure. To this the cardinals said, “You have answered well.” No further examination was had, but John XXIII., whose policy was to embroil the council with Sigismund, took occasion to ask John of Chlum whether Huss had an imperial safe-conduct, to which Chlum replied, “Holy father, you know that he has.” Again the pope asked the question and received the same answer, but none of the cardinals requested to see the document. When the morning session was over, guards were placed over Huss and John of Chlum. The weary afternoon wore away in suspense, while the cardinalsheld another session in which Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis were busy. The tedium of detention was only broken by a simple-looking Franciscan, who accosted Huss and asked for instruction on the subject of transubstantiation, and, on being satisfactorily answered, inquired about the union of humanity and divinity in Christ. Huss recognized that he was no simple inquirer, for he had asked the most difficult question in theology; he declined further colloquy, and on the retiring of the friar was informed by the guards that he was Master Didaco, renowned as the subtlest theologian of Lombardy. About nightfall John of Chlum was allowed to depart, while Huss was detained, and soon after Stephen and Michael came exultingly and told him that he was now in their power, and should not escape till he had paid the last penny. He was taken under guard to the house of the precentor of the cathedral, in charge of the Bishop of Lausanne, regent of the apostolic chamber, and after eight days was transferred to the Dominican convent on the Rhine. Here he was confined in a cell adjoining the latrines, where a fever soon caused his life to be despaired of. His sudden death would have been a most untoward event, and the pope sent his own physicians to restore him. It was in vain that his friends in Prague procured from Archbishop Conrad a declaration affirming that he had never found Huss to vary from the faith in a single word. His fate had already been virtually decided.[507]
John of Chlum’s first thought on regaining his liberty was to hasten to the pope and to expostulate with him. When the safe-conduct had reached Constance, Chlum had at once exhibited it to John XXIII., who is reported to have declared, on reading it, that if his own brother had been slain by Huss the latter should be safe while in Constance so far as he was concerned. Now he disclaimed all responsibility and threw the blame on the cardinals.[508]This question as to the safe-conduct and its violation has been the subject of so warm a discussion, and it illustrates so completely a phase of the relations between the Church and heretics, that its brief consideration here is not out of place.
The imperial safe-conduct issued to Huss was in the ordinary form, without limitation or condition. It was addressed to all the princes and subjects of the empire, ecclesiastical and secular, and to all nobles and magistrates and officials, informing them that Huss was taken into the protection of the king and of the empire, and ordering that he be permitted to pass, remain, and return without impediment, and that all help which he might require should be extended to him. Thus it was not a simpleviaticumfor protection during the journey from Bohemia, and it was not so regarded by any one. That it was intended as a safeguard during the council and the return home is shown by its issue, October 18, after Huss’s departure from Prague, and its reaching him in Constance after his arrival there. That his imprisonment was at once looked upon as a gross violation of the imperial pledge is seen in the protests which John of Chlum affixed to the church doors on December 15, probably as soon as Sigismund could be heard from, and again on the 24th, when the king was near Constance and was to arrive the next day. This paper recited that Huss had come under the imperial protection and safe-conduct to answer in public audience all who might question his faith. That, in the absence of Sigismund, who would not have permitted it, and in contempt of his safe-conduct, Huss had been thrown into prison. That the imperial ambassadors had vainly demanded his release, and that when Sigismund comes he should plainly make known to all men his grief and indignation at this violation of the imperial pledge.[509]
The suggestion that the safe-conduct was a mere passport designedly insufficient to protect Huss is a recent discovery which would not have been left to the ingenuity of modern times if it could have been alleged during the warm debate which raged over the question at Constance. That nobody thought of it then is sufficientproof that such an excuse is untenable. Such an assertion would have been all-sufficient when, May 13, 1415, the Bohemians in Constance presented a memorial to the council in which they referred to the treatment of Huss as a violation of the safe-conduct. Yet in its answer the council had no thought of making such an allegation, while at the same time Sigismund’s services in the quarrel with John XXIII. were too recent, and still too necessary, for the good fathers to inflict on him the disgrace of publicly declaring that they had righteously overruled his attempt to protect a heretic. They therefore had recourse to a lie manufactured for the occasion, by asserting, in spite of the notorious existence of the safe-conduct in Constance at the time of Huss’s arrest, that witnesses worthy of credit had proved that it had not been procured until fifteen days after that occurrence, and therefore that no public faith had been violated in the proceedings. This argument, which Sigismund himself asserted to be false in the public session of June 7, is an admission that the public faith was violated. A single fact such as this outweighs all the special pleadings of modern apologists.[510]
Sigismund at first fully justified the confidence reposed in him by Huss and John of Chlum. He made no attempt to say that his letters were not intended to protect Huss from prosecution, but treated them as having been wrongfully violated. As soon as he had heard of the arrest he had ordered Huss’s release with a threat to break open the prisons in case of refusal. On his arrival at Constance, on Christmas Day, his indignation was boundless and there was consequently great excitement. He protested that he would leave Constance, and, in fact, made a show of doing so; he even threatened to withdraw the imperial protection from the council, but was plainly told by the cardinals that they would themselves break it up unless he yielded. The hopes of Christendom had been raised to too high a pitch as to the results expected from the assemblage for him to venture on such a risk. Naturally faithless, his insistence was a matter of pride, and self-interest easily won the day. We have better materials for estimating his character than that of any other prince of the century, and from first to last we find fully justified the opinion of his contemporariesthat he was wholly unworthy of trust. During the long negotiations between the Council of Basle and the Hussites, in which he took part, we see him endeavoring impartially to deceive both sides, making solemn engagements with no intention of fulfilling them, and regarded by all parties as utterly devoid of honor. Unfortunate in war and chronically impecunious, he was ever ready to adopt any temporary expedient to evade a difficulty, and to sacrifice his plighted word to obtain an advantage.[511]
It cost him little, therefore, to withdraw from the assertion of his own honor, and the matter was so speedily arranged that when on January 1, 1415, the council formally asked him that free course of justice be allowed in the case of Huss, in spite of the pretext of safe-conduct, he at once issued a decree declaring the council free in all matters of faith and capable of proceeding against all who were defamed for heresy; moreover, he pledged himself to set at naught the threats which were freely uttered of defending Huss at all hazards. Yet the discussion still continued during January, and the pressure on him from Bohemia was so strong that for a while he still fluctuated irresolutely, but, April 8, he formally revoked all letters of safe-conduct. Huss himself had no hesitation in declaring that he had been betrayed and that Sigismund had promised his safe return. His friends took the same position. In February an assembly of the magnates of Bohemia and Moravia, gathered at Mezeritz, sent an address to Sigismund pointing out in language more forcible than courtly the disgrace and humiliation attendant upon the disregard of the imperial faith. Again, in May, afterthe flight of John XXIII. had inspired new hopes as to the action of the council, two similar assemblages held at Brünn and Prague approached him with even stronger representations. It was all in vain. Sigismund had finally taken his position, and he redeemed his hesitation with great show of zeal. When, on June 7, Huss had his second hearing before the council, Sigismund thanked the prelates for their consideration for him as shown in their leniency to Huss, whom he sternly advised to submit, for he could look for no human help; “We will never protect you in your errors and pertinacity. Rather, indeed, than do so we will prepare the fire for you with our own hands.” In the final session of July 6, Huss declared, “I came freely to the council under the public faith promised by the emperor, here present, that I should be free from all constraint, to bear witness to my innocence and to answer for my faith to all who call it in question.” With this he fixed his eyes on Sigismund, who blushed deeply. The impression made in Bohemia by Sigismund’s calculated faithlessness was ineffaceable. When, in 1433, the legates of the Council of Basle sought to throw the responsibility of the result at Constance on the false witnesses, John Rokyzana pertinently asked them how, if the council was inspired by the Holy Ghost, it could have been misled by perjurers, and he alluded to the violation of the safe-conduct in terms showing that it had been neither forgotten nor forgiven. This had been practically manifested a year earlier, in September, 1432, when the Council of Basle was eager to have Hussite deputies come to it, and the Bohemians would not stir without the most exaggerated provisions to guarantee their safety. Three safe-conducts had been furnished them—one from Sigismund, one from the council, and one from the city of Eger, but they still required others, from the city of Basle, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Counts Palatine Dukes of Bavaria, one of whom was the protector of the council. These were very different from that which had satisfied the simplicity of Huss. Thus Frederic of Brandenburg and John of Bavaria pledged themselves to furnish sufficient troops to conduct the Bohemians safely to Basle, to guard them while there, and to bring them back to any designated place in Bohemia. The princes, moreover, guaranteed the safe-conducts of Sigismund and the council, and agreed to forfeit honors and lands, to be entered upon and taken in possession by the Bohemiansin case of any unredressed violation of the pledge. These precautions were superfluous, for the envoys had at their back the terrible Bohemian levies which could enforce respect for plighted faith; but when reconciliation had taken place and Sigismund was seated on the throne of his fathers, his guarantees were again regarded as valueless. In April, 1437, he urged John Rokyzana to visit the council, and on the latter alleging fear that he might be treated as was Huss at Constance, the emperor was greatly moved and exclaimed, “Do you think that for you or for this city I would do aught against mine honor? I have given a safe-conduct and so also has the council;” but Rokyzana was not to be tempted by this appeal to the forfeited imperial honor, and steadfastly refused to go.[512]
The explanation of the controversy over the violation of the safe-conduct is perfectly simple. Germany and especially Bohemia knew so little about the Inquisition and the systematic persecution of heresy that surprise and indignation were excited by the application to the case of Huss of the recognized principles of the canon law. The council could not have done otherwise than it did without surrendering those principles. To allow a heresiarch who had become conspicuous to all Christendom, like Huss, to evade the punishment due to his crimes on so flimsy a pretext as that of his having confided himself to them on a promise of safety to which the public faith was pledged, would have seemed to the most conscientious jurists of the council the most absurd of solecisms. In point of fact, the best men who were there—the Gersons, the Peter d’Aillys, the Zabarellas—were as unflinching as the worst creatures of the curia. It had been, as we have seen, too long a principle of inquisitorial practice that the heretic had no rights,and that the man accused of heresy by sufficient witnesses was to be treated as a heretic until he could clear himself, for any one to hesitate about putting it in force in this case. When Sigismund complained that he was dishonored by the imprisonment of Huss, the canonists of the council promptly assured him, in the words of a contemporary orthodox burgher of Constance, that “it could not and might not be in any law that a heretic could enjoy a safe-conduct,” and though this was prejudging the case, we have seen how customary that was in all inquisitorial trials. These words Sigismund himself virtually repeated in his address to Huss in the session of June 7: “Many say that we cannot, under the law, protect a heretic or one suspect of heresy.” When Huss’s execution aroused the wildest indignation throughout Bohemia, expressed to the council in missives of scant courtesy, the council asserted its position in a decree formally adopted September 23, 1415, that no safe-conduct from any secular potentate could work prejudice to the Catholic faith, or could prevent any competent tribunal from trying, judging, and condemning a heretic or suspected heretic, even though, if trusting to the safe-conduct, he had come to the place of judgment and would not have come without it. So thoroughly did the council cause this to be recognized that, in 1432, in the Convention of Eger, stipulating the bases of negotiation between the Hussites and the Council of Basle, it was expressly agreed that no canons or decretals should be alleged to derogate, infringe, or annul the safe-conducts under which the Bohemian envoys were to appear before the council.[513]
The trial of Huss has been the subject of much indignant eloquence. It is the most conspicuous instance of an inquisitorialprocess on record, and to those unacquainted with the system of procedure which had grown up in the development of the Holy Office, its practical denial of justice has seemed a wilful perversity on the part of the council, while the sublimely pathetic figure of the sufferer has necessarily awakened the warmest sympathy. Yet, in fact, the only deviations of the council from the ordinary course of such affairs were special marks of lenity towards the accused. He was not subjected to the torture, as in the customary practice in such cases he should have been, and, at the instance of Sigismund, he was thrice permitted to appear before the whole body and defend himself in public session. When, therefore, we see how inevitable was his condemnation, how he could have saved himself only at the cost of burdening his soul with perjury and converting his remaining years into a living lie, we obtain a measure of the infamy of the system, and can in some degree estimate the innumerable wrongs inflicted on countless thousands of obscure and forgotten victims. In this aspect the trial is worthy of examination, for though it presents no novel points of procedure, except the concessions made to Huss, it affords an instructive example of the manner in which the inquisitorial process described in preceding chapters was practically applied.
The case against Huss was rendered stronger, almost at the outset, by the action of his friends at home. It must have been shortly after his arrival in Constance that Jacobel of Mies, who hadsucceeded Michael de Causis in the Church of St. Adalbert, commenced to administer communion in both elements to the laity, and thus gave rise to the most distinguishing and obstinate feature of Bohemian heresy. Zeal for the Eucharist had long been a marked peculiarity of religious devotion in Bohemia. The synod of 1390 promised an indulgence of forty days to all who bent the knee on the elevation of the host; and the frequent partaking of the sacrament was repeatedly and strenuously urged by those who have been classed as the precursors of Huss. Mathias of Janow had even ventured to recommend that the cup should be restored to the laity, but the question had never reappeared during the stormy years in which Huss and his friends had been battling for the Wickliffite doctrines. According to Æneas Sylvius, a certain Peter of Dresden, infected with Waldensian errors, had left Prague with the other Germans in 1409, but was driven from home on account of his heresy and took refuge again in Prague, where he supported himself as a teacher of children. He it was who suggested to Jacobel the return to the ancient practice of the Church; the heretics, delighted to find a question in which they were clearly in the right, eagerly embraced it. The custom spread to the churches of St. Michael, St. Martin, the Bethlehem Chapel, and elsewhere, in spite of the opposition of King Wenceslas and Archbishop Conrad, who vainly threatened secular punishments and ecclesiastical interdicts. Huss was speedily communicated with. He approved of the custom, as indeed he could not well help doing, and his tract in its favor, when conveyed to the disciples, gave a fresh impetus to the movement. It was in vain that on June 15, 1415, the council condemned the use of the cup by the laity, pronounced heretics all priests so administering the sacrament, ordered them to be handed over to the secular arm, and commanded all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute as heretics those who denied the propriety of communion in one element. For more than a century the Utraquists, or Calixtins, as they called themselves, were the ruling party in Bohemia. The consciousness of being in the wrong and of having to justify itself by all manner of trivial excuses rendered the council additionally eager to crush the insubordination of which Huss was the representative.[514]
We have seen that Huss was arrested November 28, 1414. Michael de Causis, Stephen Palecz, and others of his enemies hadpresented formal articles of accusation against him. These, drawn up in the name of Michael, accused him of maintaining the remanence of the substance in the Eucharist after consecration, of assertingthe vitiation of the sacraments in the hands of sinful priests and denying the power of the keys under the same conditions, of holding that the Church should have no temporal possessions, ofdisregarding excommunication, of granting the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of Wickliff, of exciting the people against the clergy, so that if he were allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine, and of other errors and offences. This was more than sufficient to justify his trial, and the process was commenced without delay by the appointment, December 1, of commissioners to examine him. These commissioners were, in fact, inquisitors, and the council at large served as the assembly of experts in which, as it will be remembered, final assent was given to the judgment. One of the commissioners at least, Bernardo, Bishop of Città di Castello, was already familiar with the matter, for only the year before, as papal nuncio in Poland, he had assisted in driving away Jerome of Prague. In addition to the articles of Michael de Causis there was a kind of indictment against Huss presented to the commissioners by the procurators and promoters of the council, reciting the troubles at Prague, his excommunication, and his teaching of Wickliffite heresies.[515]
At first the proceedings were pushed with a vigor which seemed to promise a speedy termination of the case. As soon as Huss recovered from his first sickness there was submitted to him a series of forty-two errors extracted from his writings by Palecz. To these he repliedseriatimin writing, explaining the false constructions which he asserted had been placed on some passages, defending some, and limiting and conditioning others. As he was denied the use of books, even of the treatises which were the source of the charges, these answers manifest a wonderful retentiveness of memory and quickness and clearness of intellect. Sometimes he was visited in his prison by the commissioners and personally interrogated. A Carthusian, writing from Constance, May 19, relates that the day before he had been present at such an examination and had never seen so bold and audacious a scoundrel or one who could so cautiously conceal the truth. On theother hand, we have his own account of one of these interviews. The commissioners were accompanied by Michael and Stephen to prompt them. Each article was read to him and he was asked if such was his belief; he replied, explaining the sense in which he held it. Then he would be asked if he would defend it, and he would answer no, but that he would stand to the decision of the council. Nothing could well seem more submissive or more orthodox, and under any other system of jurisprudence conviction might well appear impossible. Heresy, however, as we have seen, was a crime; once committed, even through ignorance, a simple return to the Church was not enough; belief in the errors must be admitted and then abjured, before the criminal could be considered as penitent and entitled to the substitution of perpetual imprisonment for the death-penalty. Huss was condemned on heresies which he had not held rather than those which he had taught.[516]
Thousands of miserable wretches had been convicted on a tithe of the evidence now brought against him. Stephen Palecz, a man of the highest repute, swore before the commissioners that since the birth of Christ there had been no more dangerous heretics than Wickliff and Huss, and that all who customarily attended the sermons of the latter believed in the remanence of the substance of bread in the Eucharist. What Palecz testified there were scores of others to substantiate and amplify. Witnesses were there in abundance to prove that he believed in the remanence of the bread, that the sacraments were vitiated in the hands of sinful priests, that indulgences were of no avail, that the Church of Rome was the synagogue of Satan, that heresy was to be overcome by disputation and not by force, that a papal excommunication was to be disregarded. Many of these errors he indignantly denied having entertained, but it was in vain. In vain he wrote out in prison, as early as March 5, 1415, his tract, “De Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis,” in which he declared that full transubstantiation took place; that God worked the miracle irrespective of the merits of the celebrant; that the body and blood of Christ were both in the bread and in the wine, and that he had taught this doctrine since 1401, before he was a priest. Invain, shortly before his execution, his devotion burst forth in a hymn in which he exclaimed: